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08 March 2015

The world might be becoming a better place as I've seen alternatives for barbies (or fashion-dolls as they are called not to offend Mattel) coming up in news and posts. Here you have 3 different approaches each dealing with one of the problematic aspects of fashion dolls:

1) The oversexualized and over-adult looks of the typical fashion doll leads us to taking the make-up off the Bratz dolls. The results are adorable. More here.

2) The unrealistic body proportions of the fashion dolls gets us to the Lammily, the doll that looks like an average teenager.

So here comes another one in the you-would-have-never-called-it-feminist-until-now series*. The Little Mermaid (1989). Yes, the Disney sea-princess garbage where a young girl gives up her family, friends and talents in order to pursue a man she has seen once. Meh... or at least we thought so.

Well, read this paper written by Stephanie Stott, a student in Kim Magowan’s gothic lit class at Mills College called The Little Mermaid: Our Favorite Gothic Villain and you just might want to give Ariel another try. Or at least know how to reframe the story in order to minimize the damage if young girls around you suddenly want to emulate the little mermaid.

* That's of course not actually true as somebody has analyzed these movies as such and hence we are reporting. But the great majority...

05 March 2015

The most discussed documentary of the year "India's Daughter" is out now. The story is based on Delhi's brutal gang-rape victim Jyoti Singh, her attackers, their families as well as the court and Indian culture. Ironic is that currently this documentary is available in most of the countries while it is banned in India.

Jyoti Singh was a medical student who was coming from a low income family. Although traditionally raised, she and her parents were modern thinking, While other family members were criticizing Jyoti's parents for celebrating her birth in a way a boy should be celebrated and selling their properties for a girls education, they did not stop and eventually raised a person who believed who believed in herself. Jyoti's dream was to build medical facility in her village and to be a doctor. Even though she was not able to reach her goal, her tragic death created wave of actions: protests, movements and debates in government.

Still, there are many people for who it's hard to accept the fact that this world needs a change and the fall of patriarchy. That's why still many people blame Jyoti for her death by stating that she was not supposed to be outside when it's dark, that she was not supposed to fight back if she wanted to stay alive, that it was her punishment for not being a decent girl. Others say that now it's going to be even worse, so far girls were raped and let go because they wouldn't dare to say anything. "Now they will raped and killed", says assaulter.

Murderer defending lawyer ML Sharma stated that "our culture is the best culture and there is no place for a women." while his colleague AP Singh in front of national television said that "If my daughter or sister engaged in pre-marital activities and disgraced herself to lose face and character by doing such things, I would most certainly take this sort of sister or daughter to my farmhouse, and in front of my entire family, I would put petrol on her and set her alight."

To get to know more about the story from different point of views, IHBG team highly recommends to watch the full documentary

01 March 2015

Ever wondered how some educators managed to talk about puberty without talking about sexuality? Weird, right? Here you have an old Walt Disney gem somewhat explaining menstruation without ever talking about the intercourse and women as sexual beings...

To heal from that horror, here, have some more recent Swedish stuff, hihihi.

27 February 2015

To close the little conversation on catholicism and women we've been having, here's a look from the other side. Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008) is a forceful piece on the soft power of women in patriarchal structures and of the power of a personality, of someone convinced that she knows the truth and has to do anything possible to right the wrongdoing.

It is not a coincidence that Meryl Streep is in the center of this movie, offering a story of a school principal trying to make sure that her institution is living according to highest morals. The extraordinary force of the film comes exactly from the clash between her convictions of what's right and wrong and her willingness to ruthlessly purge the ranks of her organization (the catholic church) in case of doubt about someone's adequacy to form part of it.

It's beautifully filmed, Meryl is sublime, and her torment (not for nothing the movie is named Doubt) offers a tale familiar for most doing any activism: you have to deal with unclarity, doubt, tensions between separating your own bias from the bigger picture.

22 February 2015

Just a reminder of how changing the fashion in women's bodies (!) has been so far. Like with the trends in clothing and pretty much everything else, the bodies that are now in were so out some time ago and vice versa.

So the only alternative to stay sane is to spit on trends from the third floor and go do your business!

20 February 2015

Continuing with my special mini-cycle dedicated to Catholicism and women, today's movie is basically a (polished up) sequel of The Magdalene Sisters.

Philomena (2013, Stephen Frears) is based on a true story that nevertheless feels somewhat unbelievable. Well, there's reality for you. If after The Magdalene Sisters you asked yourself about the possible futures of the girls who got away from the religious institutions controlling them, here you have the story of Philomena Lee.

There's difference and nuance, though. In the eyes of the religious establishment Philomena had comitted a sin. She had sex before marriage (oh!) with someone she (apparently) barely knew (gasp!) and she liked it! Mind you, this is a very important difference between the discourse that The Magdelene Sisters present and Philomena's story. As Rose in last week's movie (in contrast of other women in that film), Philomena did actually transgress the social norms and was very unlucky to become pregnant as a consequence. And her child was taken away from her.

This is the double sword of the story. On one hand, there's actual pleasure involved. She enjoyed being with that boy. On the other hand, this very fact makes her even more vulnerable to all the injustice done to her afterwards. If your religion (and people in position to punish you) maintain that you have to repent and suffer for your sins, and you know very well that you have transgressed, the likelihood of rebellion seems to be lower.

Yet this is only a part of the story. The second drama revels when Philomena - already older and after a marriage and other children - gets help of a journalist in trying to find her son. Apart from a pretty unbelievable turn of events... Ah, go, see it! ... you get the amazing dame Judi Dench playing someone torn apart by her trauma of loss of a child and faith that's represented by the same people who treated her so badly.

An additional feature that makes the movie a treat is the clash of worlds that her interactions with the world class journalist embarked upon a human interest story lead to. These ar class difference and not gender driven, and challenge the airbrushed image of drama-worthy and interesting people. Good for you, Philomena!

Want a recipe for complete disaster of human wellbeing? Organize a society where a group devoted to the belief that human sexuality is impure and sinful (and legitimized only by procreation inside the wedlock) has a lot of power. Then - making a reference to an old book of tribal myths from 2000 years ago - decide that only one half of each heterosexual couple is to bear the burden of stigma attached to "improper" sexual behaviour: the woman. Sum to that a parallel belief that sins can be paid of by hard work and being miserable. And then a sinister idea that there actually might be a profit to be made of the hard work of the sinners confined to closed spaces and completely controlled by (people pretending to be) religious fanatics.

That's the ugly story of the Magdalene laundries in a nutshell: "fallen" women disowned by their families and exploited by catholic orders... Watch the movie, do an advanced google search, read some books and/or articles on this very disgraceful page of catholic church! At least you'll know the dark side of the all-the-charity-work-the-religion-has-been-doing-for-women discourse.

The impact that the trauma had on the lives of those that managed to survive that living hell? I'll tell you next week which movie to watch for that bit of information... But you can start by reading this.

11 February 2015

The peaceful, silent street on a day that I took a walk alone late at night in Indiranagar, Bangalore.

“Girls are supposed to be seen, not heard”
– I grew up listening my matron in the liberal boarding school I attended repeat
this old adage over and over again back in 1994. Girls, she believed, were
always to be seriously disciplined, discouraged from speaking up and punished
often if they asked questions. One of the many rules the school enforced, I
remember, was that we weren’t supposed to roam around campus at night on our
own. Anywhere girl students went, an escort — either a staff member or a house
warden — would be beside them so that they didn’t “misbehave”.

For
several years, throughout high school and university, I found that this strange
rule was observed in almost every private hostel for girls or young women. Our
college hostel warden urged us to return to the premises by 6 pm. If we
returned any later, we would have to pay a fine. At home, my parents would ask
us to call if we were going out with friends in the evening. The night, as so
many of us knew it, was out of reach. It was a time of day that was a mystery,
filled with questions. Every now and then we would hear a story about women who
had chains snatched, or were groped or molested on the road. Yet, to many of us,
the night held promise of solitude, romance, parties, and long hours spent in
reckless abandon.

To
me, the darkness evokes mixed emotions. It brings back memories of the night of
my first kiss with my childhood sweetheart, when we stood under the lamppost
clinging on to each other, our hearts beating wildly against our chests. But it
also brings back the intense fear I felt when I was first attacked on my way
home in the evening; flashes of light as I was being dragged along the corners
of the road by thieves on a motorcycle, thrown in front of a car while they
wrenched my belongings away from me. I came home that night, my head bleeding,
bruised all over my body. The policeman asked me two days later when I went to
complain – “What were you doing out at night alone? Girls shouldn’t be walking
alone at night.”

On
December 2012, when a young physiotherapy student was brutally gang-raped on a
moving bus, there were several voices in the Indian public arena openly asking
whether she invited the assault by breaking the rule. Why did she step out at night?
Dr Asha Mirge, a member of the Maharashtra Women’s Commission, asked
more than a year after the incident. Mirge famously commented on the Delhi
gang rape and the Shakti Mills gang rapes, asking, “Why Nirbhaya, the victim in
the infamous Delhi gang rape case in December 2012 should go to movie for a
late night show (11 PM), and similarly the photo-journalist in Mumbai go to an isolated
place of Shakti Mills at 6 PM?"

Now,
after so many years, this sparked a revolution on the ground. It was a silent
revolution, not one that was violent and filled with rage. Instead, women
across the city were coming together to claim all of the day. They were
stepping out to parks, going on picnics, enjoying exploring the city and
travelling alone at night. Even better, they were challenging their own
stereotypes about men and darkness. The campaign which gently ushered them to
do this was called #WhyLoiter, a simple
movement started by two young men asking women across India to post a photo of
themselves loitering the streets, venturing out any time of the day and
enjoying their public spaces. In just a few weeks, nearly two million women
responded with photos of them taking on their freedoms; exploring dark
alleyways, sleeping in the parks, eating chaat
in the streets and climbing mountaintops. A rule had silently been broken.

Walking
out alone at night in Bangalore

That
night, I stepped out and decided I’d go for a walk alone. It was 11.45 pm and
the streets were empty. Even the main road, which was usually lined with groups
of twenty-somethings smoking or enjoying a laugh outside a pub, was quiet and
dark. At first, I was cautious, ensuring that I stayed on the side of the
street lamp all the time. Then, I didn’t care. It took me some time to breathe
easy but I did it. It’s a feeling I cannot explain; that sense of lightness I
felt when I didn’t turn around every second to look out for strangers, or
speeding motorcyclists, or sounds. I just walked, strolling along at the usual
pace that helped me relax. Fear, I realized, is often
such a heavy and comforting feeling that it wraps women in a tight embrace they
cannot break free from. Fear is comforting because it makes you take fewer chances;
it feeds on your insecurities to keep you on the straight and narrow road. But
freedom is silent, waiting for you to step outside the shadows of doubt.

08 February 2015

There is one sure way to be able to argue with gender essentialists: knowing the science better than they do. Even if they turn out hard to convince, at least you'll know that the facts are on your side.

Depending on how deeply you want to explore the topic, I'm offering three options: two serious books (written by women scientists, yeah!) and a MythBusters video. Your choice.

Delusions of Gender (2010) by Cordelia Fine will take you through all the common gender difference research. And will show that most of that is rather questionable stuff, mostly reflecting the bias of the researchers instead of actual intrinsic differences among people. Very nice to begin to explore the topic!

Brain Storm (2011) by Rebecca Jordan-Young is a heavier and more serious (as in more scientifically worded and structured) read. And pretty much all of it is dedicated to the ongoing quests looking for female brain as opposed to the male brain. She beautifully traces all the usual tricks used - with special attention to studies of intersex individuals (go, read Middlesex!) - for those trying really hard to find biological/neuroscientific arguments against the idea of complete gender equality.

And just for a little insight in how you should think about gender differences, trying to disentangle the social and the biological, here you have MythBusters dealing with the throw like a girl thing. Yes, the same one that leads to stuff like the "empowering" Always advertising.